…which is just about everything. Stop worrying about and putting time and effort into anything that isn’t critical to the success of your business. Be tough. Take a step back and really think about what is essential for improving the business.
It’s hard to do. We are accustomed to thinking that many more things are required than actually are. We fear eliminating things just in case they might be necessary or useful some time in the future. We’re caught by the endowment effect…divestiture aversion…a tendency to over value things once we have them. We lose our ability to differentiate the necessary from the nice to have, the long term critical from the immediately in front of us. We forget that if everything is important, nothing is.
All too often the immediate grabs our attention and we drop everything else to take care of it…without any thought about it’s importance. We ignore or put off dealing with something critical because it’s just so much easier to fix some simple thing that popped up and distracted us. We let every distraction grab our attention and focus.
And yet, greater success comes from maintaining your focus on the few things that really are critical. Greater success comes not allowing yourself to be distracted by the minor but immediate, by the constant emails and texts, by the hurricane of noise that comes with volume and intensity but no depth or value.
Look out over the next 90 days. Make a list of what you need to do. No doubt it goes on and on. Step back. Be tough. Force yourself to really think about which are the 3 or 4 critical things that absolutely have to be completed over the next 90 days for business success. Pick those things that are mission critical. After all, you are only going to be able to do so much so do that which has the biggest impact. Save the rest for another day.
Now work on these 3 or 4 critical tasks and get them done. You have 90 days. The rest will still be there waiting for you although you’ll probably find some of these less important things disappear. It turns out that many are symptoms and when you solve the critical the symptoms take care of themselves.
Do things by choice, by conscious design. Not by accident or random happenstance. Eliminate the non-essential. You’ll be amazed how much more effective you are and how much more time you create. Now get everyone else in your organization to do the same thing. Focus on the important and leave the rest to fare how it will.
An amazing thing will happen as this way of working permeates your organization. Everything improves.